I'd almost argue this. After all, there's no reason a person needs a main battle tank, or a series of cruise missiles, sitting in their backyard.
Can you "bear" a main battle tank or a cruise missile? No.
"Arms", in historical context, meant guns that were carried by a soldier. The term was understood to be distinct from "cannon", big-ass guns that were not something a man would "keep and bear".
If a weapon is something that an infantryman would carry into battle, it falls within the rightful scope of the right to keep and bear arms recognized in Amendment II, within the corollary to right of self- and community-defense - the right of access to defensive tools.
If it's a WMD, if its mere presence creates a danger to people nearby (like if my neighbor was keeping anthrax spores or large amounts of TNT in his shed), the RKBA is not infringed by regulating it.
Except, for the fact, that a peashooter isn't going to do it these days.
Iraq. Afghanistan (US and USSR experiences). Palestine. Vietnam. Connect the dots and see the picture: groups with "pea shooters" can mount a significant resistance against an vastly better armed occupier.
There's also the part about it being for an organized militia.
Because it's not in there.
Amendment II says that because an well-trained and disciplined ("well-regulated") militia is vital to the national security, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
It does not say the RKBA of militia members shall not be infringed. It says "the right of the people".
The introductory clause about the militia is just stating why the RKBA is important. The foundering understood that standing armies are inherently dangerous, and sought to have the new nation rely primarily on militias for its defense.
[Outlook and Notes] use features that are integral to businesses, such as booking of conference rooms, sharing of calenders, event invites, managing of tasks
And that's the problem. These are not things that should be done by your e-mail program. Your e-mail program should just do e-mail, and do it well. All that other crud should be handled by a web app on your intranet.
Sorry. Blame the Library of Congress for handing out bogus URLs.
and you are wrong anyway. It's 25K per quarter.
Which in the most typical units in which income is expressed is $100k a year. 60 miles an hour is still 60 mph even if you're only driving for 15 minutes.
Also, the problem with the law is much less about the law existing as much as it is about the broad scope that it can cover
The bill covered a very narrow scope of people.
Do you just not give a damn about other's rights as long as they are against the Democrats?
Ars Technica points out that the bill in question was co-sponsored by top Republican Mitch McConnell, and is just an exact re-introduction of a bill put forward last year by Trent Lott - which passed the Republican-controlled Senate. The attempt to paint this as an attempt by those Mean Old Democrats to Silence the Masses may be good truthiness, but it just isn't true.
As for my own opinions, I have been an independent voter since I registered in 1987. In that time I have voted for Greens, Libertarians, Democrats, and yes, even one Republican candidate. I have made more than a few negative comments about Democratic politicians over the years - in fact I have suggested in the past that the party ought to dissolve and make way for real progressives. So, no, I have no desire to silence those who criticize the Democrats.
In any case, do you honestly think that it's lobbyists that make politicians bad?
A fire needs fuel, oxygen, and heat. Take away one, no fire.
A crime takes motive, method, and opportunity. Take away one, no crime.
Corruption takes corruptible politicians, money, and people who want
favors. The fact that politicians are not angels means we have to be that
much more careful about money and lobbyists.
I'd say that the Dems have been WAY WAY WAY more socialist than the GOP for years now. All this does is prove it.
What in the world does this have to do with the question of who controls economic resources? Nothing at all. It has fsck-all to do with the socialist/capitalist axis.
Democrats have been in favor of a slightly more regulated market, but that's not socialism either; market socialism and planned economy capitalism are both possible. (The former existed briefly during the Spanish Civil War, the later in the U.S. during WWII.) Outside their fringes, both the Democratic and Republican parties are firmly capitalist.
So can we stop using "socialist" as a McCarthyist scare word already?
Hence my use of the phrase, "wait until you had the technology."
The problem is that you're blithely assuming the technology is not just possible but will inevitablly develop; "wait until you have the technology", like "wait until the sun comes up".
You're right, the whole idea of self-replication is clearly impossible.
Complex self-replicating biological entities function as part of an ecosystem that supports many of their needs. I don't have to make my own oxygen or my own amino acids. Assuming that complex artifical entities can be developed that are not supported by such an ecosystem - assuming not just that the can be, but inevitablly will be, developed - is silly.
The only question about its feasibility is whether we start using energy sources of the appropriate magnitude or not. All the rest is just engineering.
It's not "just" engineering; it's also politics, economics, philosophy, biology - even, if I may use a dangerous word, spirituality, in the sense of one's relationship with the universe.
Assuming that all of these issue are certain, or even likely, to be resolved, is naive in the extreme. Not to say I don't want them solved, just saying that to attack TFA on the basis that "pheh, interstellar travel is easy" is silly.
Why isn't it practical? There's no reason whatsoever that it won't be practical.
Number one, there has to be someplace to go. The number of planets that can support life of some kind is probably fairly large; the number that can support human life in a pleasant fashion is almost certain to be rather small. Terraforming is fantasy; even if achieved, we'd use it on Mars and Venus first, maybe move some of the gas giant moons around.
Number two, there has to be a way to get there - not just to send a vessel, but to send a vessel with a living healthy crew that maintains the culture of their home world (else why bother to send them?). We haven't even managed to get humans out of Earth's orbit yet, or even keep one in orbit for more than 500 days; building multi-generation colony ships is engineering fantasy, biological fanstsy, and sociological fantasy.
Number three, a substantial part of the civilization in question has to agree that there's a good reason to go there. An interstellar colony mission would be a tremendous expense; it's a tremendous question of politics and economics. (For comparison,
Fantasies are fine things. Every so often we manage to make one come true, and it would be way cool if interstellar colonization turned out to be one of those. But in assessing the "objective" universe, we ought not to make assumptions based on them.
you'd create hundreds of thousands of probes, if not millions of probes..You'd wait until you had the technology to make self-replicating probes, and the galaxy could potentially be explored in thousands of years.
Uh-huh. And how many self-replicating probes traveling at.1 c have you developed?
The fact that we can imagine self-replicating interstellar probes doesn't mean they are practical or possible.
How is this 'costly'? How many human lives would be lost as you install these defense systems in passenger liners? I don't think any.
How many human lives could be saved if those billions went into housing, food, education, and medical care?
Every expenditure has opportunity costs.
I agree that this system is orders of magnitude less expensive than Bush's Folly, but that doesn't mean this is a good idea, just a less bad one than invading Iraq. (Then again, spending a few billion dollars to build a set of diamond-encrusted solid-gold outhouses on the Mall in D.C. would have been a less bad idea than invading Iraq, the bar is kind of low there.)
But the press should give unbiased representation to both sides, so that people can draw their own conclusions - it's their job.
"Unbiased representation" means calling things like they are.
Religious crackpots who believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, or people who believe that the "Face on Mars" is an artifical construct, or conspiracy theorists who claim the moon landings were fake, or modern geocentrists, or industry shills paid to create confusion about climate change: calling these people "experts" or "skeptics", representing their ideas as anything but fringe beliefs well outside the mainstream of scientific thought, is biased representation.
So the protesters stoop to violence and destruction of (virtual) property in their aim to stop the FN from exercising their basic human right of free speech and political representation.
"Virtual" property? No such thing.
In a computer game, strafing a "building" with "gunfire" is just an act of expression. It's a purely symbolic realm.
The "violence" and "destruction" is no more real than in a Quake deathmatch. (Yeah, I should probably use a more contempory example, but I'm old. You kids today with your MMORPGs...)
I don't know why everyone has to be in everyone else's business like a busy body homemaker peering over the neighbors fence.
Agreed.
I am not a socialist by any stretch because I just see that as economic terrorism and extortion.
Probably because you don't know what socialism is.
Socialism is an economic system in which the workers control the "means of production" - economic resources, capital. Its opposite is capitalism, in which economic resources are controlled by a minority of government-designated and backed "owners".
Worker's control may be direct (libertarian socialism) or indirect (state socialism). Just as with capitalism there are libertarian and authoritarian forms of socialism, planned-economy and free-market versions. It is not the case that socialism implies a planned economy and capitalism a free market. Let me recommend again this page on libertarian socialism - if nothing else, to see how the right stole the term "libertarian" from its leftist roots.
The fact that a generally intelligent fellow like you has been conditioned to associate an economic system based on labor rather than capital, with "economic terrorism and extortion", is an indicator of firmly the right controls the dialog on economic issues. If there truly was a left wing media bias, "socialism" would not be a dirty word in American discourse.
You mean like NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, NPR, Various Publishing Houses
The New York Times and Washington Post have been reliably conservative on foreign policy. They're reliable supporters of Israel; they've were unquestioning of the Iraq war until recently (if they'd done their jobs and revealed Bush's bullshit before we were up to our necks in it, the war wouldn't have happened). The front section of the Post always has a bunch of ads for fighter planes and weapons systems, after all; a bit of war is good for their sponsors business. They feature conservative voices on their editorial pages, and their reporting on economic issues skews center-right.
I don't know so much about the LA Times. CNN is also full of conservative voices. NPR is not a for-profit corporation, but has a conservative bias in its sources. "Various Publishing Houses" is vague and meaningless.
The way I figure it, 1/2 is left wing, 1/2 is right wing, and 0 represent Libertarian position.
Libertarian capitalism - which is usually what's meant by "capital L" Libertarian, the position of the the Libertarian party, is a right-wing position. Properly speaking, left and right are economic positions, being in favor of labor and capital respectively.
(It is of course possible to be a leftist or socialist libertarian, but that's "little l" libertarian.)
The Wall Street Journal is often libertarian capitalist in its bias; certainly there are a number of smaller publications, such as Reason.
"Yes, I'm saying that conservative social positions correlate with provincialism and ignorance."
That is your opinion, and is based on the kind of elitism I detest.
If being in favor of education and diversity means "elitism", then I will proudly call myself elitist.
How about this, I leave you alone, you leave me alone, I won't take your money for things you don't like, and you won't take my money for things I don't like. Deal?
The leave each other alone thing is fine. The "not take my money" has the complication of figuring out just what is my money, since money - like many forms of property - a creation of the state.
Libertarian capitalists like to talk about getting the government out of "meddling" in economic matters, but when I suggest revoking government issued corporate charters, land and resource deeds, patents and copyrights, all the government interventions that make capitalism possible, they blanch.
I'm sure that there are equally egregious examples from "right wing" media, but since I can't actually point to any "right wing" media outlets, I'm stumped at actually describing one.
(It is true that, like most educated and cosmopolitan people, journalists tend to be more liberal on social issues. Yes, I'm saying that conservative social positions correlate with provincialism and ignorance.)
It is the control of media by right-wing corporations (a large publicly traded profit-seeking corporation is, by definition, a right-wing entity, favoring capital over labor) that shuts off alternative viewpoints, and makes people wonder if a "fairness doctrine" might be the answer.
While the problem is real, the proposed solution sucks; a better idea is to restrict corporate ownership of media, preventing concentration of the control of information.
Aren't heterosexual marriage documents still handed out by churches?
Churches can hand out whatever documents they want regarding religious marriage.
Reverend Ivan Stang once ordained the whole audience at a talk I attended as ULC ministers. I can send you a document stating that you're "religiously married" to your cat, an oak tree, or the planet Neptune, and it means just as much as any other document issued by a church.
What counts is the documents the government gives you, and you give the government, regarding your legal marriage. Some of those documents (laws vary from state to state) have a place for someone to sign, saying "I performed a marriage ceremony for Alice and Bob on such-and-such date", but what makes the thing legal is the issuance or receipt of the papers by the government.
This guy is kind of a known crackpot. Do a search on his name plus "Angel Light" or "God Light" if you don't believe me.
Thing is, crackpots can still make brilliant discoveries. Newton was an alchemist; Tesla made all sorts of bizarre claims about death rays, "thought photography", and the like.
Hurtubise's bear suit work seems legitimate, so to the extent that the "Trojan" is an extension of that, extreme skepticism doesn't seem called for. OTOH, the "God Light"...well, maybe dude got hit in the head too many times while testing his bear suit or something.
You are effing-A RIGHT I never worked in marketing. I never worked in prostitution or drug-dealing either, which I consider to be similar fields of endeavor.
Hey, that's not fair. Prostitutes and drug-dealers actually provide goods and services that people want, and it's a low blow to them to compare them to marketing flacks.
If someone is forcing ads down your throat, then fine block them (I do). But if you agree to them, in exchange for something else, just accept them.
I've never made, nor even seen, any agreement about viewing ads in return for service. What site has this in their service agreement? Does it specify how long you have look at each one or something?
I personally do have Adblock installed on my machine here, but I only use turn it on for sites that uses ads in a way that are obtrusive
The only ads that are not obtrusive are text-based. Google got it right smack in the center of the bullseye with that one.
Banner ads suck. (Animated banner ads, of course, go far beyond sucking, and the just damnation that awaits those who use them is terrible to contemplate.) Simple text links that tell me, "this message brought to you by EarthTouch Shiatsu and Catonsville Seido Karate" don't bother me at all and are occasionally (very occasionally) even useful.
I am starting up a new gaming company that will depend on ad revenue on the site to survive.
there are so many gotchas in PHP, you have to be an expert to be aware of them all. (I've listed some in a previous post on/. , and won't repeat myself here).
Looking at your list, I see complaints about:
magic_quotes and register_globals, which are options that can be turned off: register_globals is off by default, and has been that way for a long time. Anyone who turns it back on deserves what they get. It's a dead issue. magic_quotes is headed for the same fate in PHP 6. They seemed like good ideas at the time the web as young; they turned out not to be.
"Only critical errors are reported...unless you specifically turn up the error_reporting level" Configurable logging and reporting is a feature, not a bug.
"fopen_urls: By default you can include scripts hosted on other websites!" I'll agree, that should probably be off by default. But a developer has to be naive or dim to either use an URL include, or include a variable in the include directive (and thus introduce the possibility of a URL inclusion) without being damn sure what they're doing.
"Inconsistencies: What one function does can never be applied to what another function does; you can never assume anything with the PHP library and always have to keep a browser window with the PHP manual handy. Using a function without carefully reading up what it does, even when it's very similar to another function you're familiar with, is asking for trouble in PHP." And in C (bcopy versus memcpy, anyone?), and C++, and Perl, and Javascript, and... In fact, most of these "inconsistencies" stem from trying to stay consistent with functions borrowed from C, Perl, et cetera. That's a good goal.
"Input checking is difficult...Do you want htmlentities() or htmlspecialchars()?" Depends on what you want to do, now, doesn't it? Developers have to know what conditions they need their data to adhere to, and PHP gives them a variety of tools to make it fit those conditions. Feature, not a bug.
The most hostile environment to develop for is not the place for a language that makes it so easy to trip up!
It's easier to trip up badly in C (by commiting some memory buffer error) or Perl (by writing line noise code that you can't understand a week later) than PHP. But it's no longer fashionable to bash those languages.
Zend needs to give security priority over backwards compatibility, and get rid of all of their problems that developers repeatedly trip up on.
Apparently what you see as "problems", others see as features.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you "bear" a main battle tank or a cruise missile? No.
"Arms", in historical context, meant guns that were carried by a soldier. The term was understood to be distinct from "cannon", big-ass guns that were not something a man would "keep and bear".
If a weapon is something that an infantryman would carry into battle, it falls within the rightful scope of the right to keep and bear arms recognized in Amendment II, within the corollary to right of self- and community-defense - the right of access to defensive tools.
If it's a WMD, if its mere presence creates a danger to people nearby (like if my neighbor was keeping anthrax spores or large amounts of TNT in his shed), the RKBA is not infringed by regulating it. Except, for the fact, that a peashooter isn't going to do it these days.
Iraq. Afghanistan (US and USSR experiences). Palestine. Vietnam. Connect the dots and see the picture: groups with "pea shooters" can mount a significant resistance against an vastly better armed occupier.
Because it's not in there.
Amendment II says that because an well-trained and disciplined ("well-regulated") militia is vital to the national security, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
It does not say the RKBA of militia members shall not be infringed. It says "the right of the people".
The introductory clause about the militia is just stating why the RKBA is important. The foundering understood that standing armies are inherently dangerous, and sought to have the new nation rely primarily on militias for its defense.
And even if Amendment II did restrict the RKBA to militia members, guess what? The militia is defined in U.S. law to include all able-bodied men between 17 and 45.
And that's the problem. These are not things that should be done by your e-mail program. Your e-mail program should just do e-mail, and do it well. All that other crud should be handled by a web app on your intranet.
Sorry. Blame the Library of Congress for handing out bogus URLs.
Which in the most typical units in which income is expressed is $100k a year. 60 miles an hour is still 60 mph even if you're only driving for 15 minutes.
The bill covered a very narrow scope of people.
Ars Technica points out that the bill in question was co-sponsored by top Republican Mitch McConnell, and is just an exact re-introduction of a bill put forward last year by Trent Lott - which passed the Republican-controlled Senate. The attempt to paint this as an attempt by those Mean Old Democrats to Silence the Masses may be good truthiness, but it just isn't true.
As for my own opinions, I have been an independent voter since I registered in 1987. In that time I have voted for Greens, Libertarians, Democrats, and yes, even one Republican candidate. I have made more than a few negative comments about Democratic politicians over the years - in fact I have suggested in the past that the party ought to dissolve and make way for real progressives. So, no, I have no desire to silence those who criticize the Democrats.
A fire needs fuel, oxygen, and heat. Take away one, no fire.
A crime takes motive, method, and opportunity. Take away one, no crime.
Corruption takes corruptible politicians, money, and people who want favors. The fact that politicians are not angels means we have to be that much more careful about money and lobbyists.
Except that's not what this bill was about. It's not about bloggers, not even about big-time bloggers. It was about people getting paid $100k+ a year "in support of lobbying contacts on behalf of a client to influence the general public or segments thereof to contact one or more covered legislative or executive branch officials (or Congress as a whole) to urge such officials (or Congress) to take specific action with respect to a matter..." being required to register as lobbiyists. Which is what they are.
It appears that both submissions to /. on this have been inaccurate FUD, spin from the pro-lobbyist lobby.
What in the world does this have to do with the question of who controls economic resources? Nothing at all. It has fsck-all to do with the socialist/capitalist axis.
Democrats have been in favor of a slightly more regulated market, but that's not socialism either; market socialism and planned economy capitalism are both possible. (The former existed briefly during the Spanish Civil War, the later in the U.S. during WWII.) Outside their fringes, both the Democratic and Republican parties are firmly capitalist.
So can we stop using "socialist" as a McCarthyist scare word already?
The problem is that you're blithely assuming the technology is not just possible but will inevitablly develop; "wait until you have the technology", like "wait until the sun comes up".
Complex self-replicating biological entities function as part of an ecosystem that supports many of their needs. I don't have to make my own oxygen or my own amino acids. Assuming that complex artifical entities can be developed that are not supported by such an ecosystem - assuming not just that the can be, but inevitablly will be, developed - is silly.
It's not "just" engineering; it's also politics, economics, philosophy, biology - even, if I may use a dangerous word, spirituality, in the sense of one's relationship with the universe.
Assuming that all of these issue are certain, or even likely, to be resolved, is naive in the extreme. Not to say I don't want them solved, just saying that to attack TFA on the basis that "pheh, interstellar travel is easy" is silly.
Number one, there has to be someplace to go. The number of planets that can support life of some kind is probably fairly large; the number that can support human life in a pleasant fashion is almost certain to be rather small. Terraforming is fantasy; even if achieved, we'd use it on Mars and Venus first, maybe move some of the gas giant moons around.
Number two, there has to be a way to get there - not just to send a vessel, but to send a vessel with a living healthy crew that maintains the culture of their home world (else why bother to send them?). We haven't even managed to get humans out of Earth's orbit yet, or even keep one in orbit for more than 500 days; building multi-generation colony ships is engineering fantasy, biological fanstsy, and sociological fantasy.
Number three, a substantial part of the civilization in question has to agree that there's a good reason to go there. An interstellar colony mission would be a tremendous expense; it's a tremendous question of politics and economics. (For comparison,
Fantasies are fine things. Every so often we manage to make one come true, and it would be way cool if interstellar colonization turned out to be one of those. But in assessing the "objective" universe, we ought not to make assumptions based on them.
Uh-huh. And how many self-replicating probes traveling at .1 c have you developed?
The fact that we can imagine self-replicating interstellar probes doesn't mean they are practical or possible.
You're assuming interstellar colonization as practical. While it's a sci-fi staple, load of fun to imagine, it's quite likely not.
How many human lives could be saved if those billions went into housing, food, education, and medical care?
Every expenditure has opportunity costs.
I agree that this system is orders of magnitude less expensive than Bush's Folly, but that doesn't mean this is a good idea, just a less bad one than invading Iraq. (Then again, spending a few billion dollars to build a set of diamond-encrusted solid-gold outhouses on the Mall in D.C. would have been a less bad idea than invading Iraq, the bar is kind of low there.)
"Unbiased representation" means calling things like they are.
Religious crackpots who believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, or people who believe that the "Face on Mars" is an artifical construct, or conspiracy theorists who claim the moon landings were fake, or modern geocentrists, or industry shills paid to create confusion about climate change: calling these people "experts" or "skeptics", representing their ideas as anything but fringe beliefs well outside the mainstream of scientific thought, is biased representation.
"Virtual" property? No such thing.
In a computer game, strafing a "building" with "gunfire" is just an act of expression. It's a purely symbolic realm.
The "violence" and "destruction" is no more real than in a Quake deathmatch. (Yeah, I should probably use a more contempory example, but I'm old. You kids today with your MMORPGs...)
Agreed.
Probably because you don't know what socialism is.
Socialism is an economic system in which the workers control the "means of production" - economic resources, capital. Its opposite is capitalism, in which economic resources are controlled by a minority of government-designated and backed "owners".
Worker's control may be direct (libertarian socialism) or indirect (state socialism). Just as with capitalism there are libertarian and authoritarian forms of socialism, planned-economy and free-market versions. It is not the case that socialism implies a planned economy and capitalism a free market. Let me recommend again this page on libertarian socialism - if nothing else, to see how the right stole the term "libertarian" from its leftist roots.
The fact that a generally intelligent fellow like you has been conditioned to associate an economic system based on labor rather than capital, with "economic terrorism and extortion", is an indicator of firmly the right controls the dialog on economic issues. If there truly was a left wing media bias, "socialism" would not be a dirty word in American discourse.
The New York Times and Washington Post have been reliably conservative on foreign policy. They're reliable supporters of Israel; they've were unquestioning of the Iraq war until recently (if they'd done their jobs and revealed Bush's bullshit before we were up to our necks in it, the war wouldn't have happened). The front section of the Post always has a bunch of ads for fighter planes and weapons systems, after all; a bit of war is good for their sponsors business. They feature conservative voices on their editorial pages, and their reporting on economic issues skews center-right.
I don't know so much about the LA Times. CNN is also full of conservative voices. NPR is not a for-profit corporation, but has a conservative bias in its sources. "Various Publishing Houses" is vague and meaningless.
Libertarian capitalism - which is usually what's meant by "capital L" Libertarian, the position of the the Libertarian party, is a right-wing position. Properly speaking, left and right are economic positions, being in favor of labor and capital respectively.
(It is of course possible to be a leftist or socialist libertarian, but that's "little l" libertarian.)
The Wall Street Journal is often libertarian capitalist in its bias; certainly there are a number of smaller publications, such as Reason.
No, it's not just my opinion.
It's long been clear that urban areas are more social liberal than rural ones. It's harder to maintain prejudices in a more densely populated area where your neighbors are diverse.
The more educated the population of a state, the less likely that state was to vote for Bush in 2000; college graduates are much less socially conservative than people with less education.
If being in favor of education and diversity means "elitism", then I will proudly call myself elitist.
The leave each other alone thing is fine. The "not take my money" has the complication of figuring out just what is my money, since money - like many forms of property - a creation of the state.
Libertarian capitalists like to talk about getting the government out of "meddling" in economic matters, but when I suggest revoking government issued corporate charters, land and resource deeds, patents and copyrights, all the government interventions that make capitalism possible, they blanch.
Surely you jest.
Mainstream media outlets owned by publicly traded corporations are the "right wing" media outlets. As for journalists themselves, they are mostly centrist, with a right-wing bias on economic issues.
(It is true that, like most educated and cosmopolitan people, journalists tend to be more liberal on social issues. Yes, I'm saying that conservative social positions correlate with provincialism and ignorance.)
It is the control of media by right-wing corporations (a large publicly traded profit-seeking corporation is, by definition, a right-wing entity, favoring capital over labor) that shuts off alternative viewpoints, and makes people wonder if a "fairness doctrine" might be the answer.
While the problem is real, the proposed solution sucks; a better idea is to restrict corporate ownership of media, preventing concentration of the control of information.
Churches can hand out whatever documents they want regarding religious marriage.
Reverend Ivan Stang once ordained the whole audience at a talk I attended as ULC ministers. I can send you a document stating that you're "religiously married" to your cat, an oak tree, or the planet Neptune, and it means just as much as any other document issued by a church.
What counts is the documents the government gives you, and you give the government, regarding your legal marriage. Some of those documents (laws vary from state to state) have a place for someone to sign, saying "I performed a marriage ceremony for Alice and Bob on such-and-such date", but what makes the thing legal is the issuance or receipt of the papers by the government.
Thing is, crackpots can still make brilliant discoveries. Newton was an alchemist; Tesla made all sorts of bizarre claims about death rays, "thought photography", and the like.
Hurtubise's bear suit work seems legitimate, so to the extent that the "Trojan" is an extension of that, extreme skepticism doesn't seem called for. OTOH, the "God Light"...well, maybe dude got hit in the head too many times while testing his bear suit or something.
Hey, that's not fair. Prostitutes and drug-dealers actually provide goods and services that people want, and it's a low blow to them to compare them to marketing flacks.
The link you provide says "the Service may include advertisements". It says nothing about any obligation on your part to look at them.
I've never made, nor even seen, any agreement about viewing ads in return for service. What site has this in their service agreement? Does it specify how long you have look at each one or something?
The only ads that are not obtrusive are text-based. Google got it right smack in the center of the bullseye with that one.
Banner ads suck. (Animated banner ads, of course, go far beyond sucking, and the just damnation that awaits those who use them is terrible to contemplate.) Simple text links that tell me, "this message brought to you by EarthTouch Shiatsu and Catonsville Seido Karate" don't bother me at all and are occasionally (very occasionally) even useful.
Then I suggest you take Google's hint.
Looking at your list, I see complaints about:
It's easier to trip up badly in C (by commiting some memory buffer error) or Perl (by writing line noise code that you can't understand a week later) than PHP. But it's no longer fashionable to bash those languages.
Apparently what you see as "problems", others see as features.
Sounds like PEAR's DB module or MDB2 modules.